Over the weekend of October 17-19, Fisherman’s Post hosted the 2025 Pleasure Island Surf Fishing Challenge, one of the largest surf fishing tournaments on the East Coast. This year’s event drew 465 anglers to the Carolina shoreline for 36 hours of competitive surf fishing, with lines hitting the water at midnight Friday and anglers free to fish as much or as little as they wanted until noon on Sunday. After several weeks of rough weather leading up to the tournament, the weekend delivered calm surf, light winds, and bluebird sky conditions for a great weekend of fishing, fun, and camaraderie.
The standout fish of the weekend was the 7.3 lb. red drum landed by Ronnie Little, a catch made possible thanks to the support of Kure Beach Fire & Rescue, who loaned him a beach wheelchair for the event. Originally from Carolina Beach and now living in Southport, Little was fishing just south of the Civil War Museum at Fort Fisher when the big red hit a piece of fresh-cut mullet on a fish finder rig around 2:00 am on Saturday morning.
“It was flopping in the suds, and I just dragged it up on the beach,” Little recalled. “I was kind of in shock.”…